Thousand Yard Stare

Comments have been switched off. When this site was set up I had no idea that a torrent of annoying spam had to be processed and I am too impatient to do that.

People who know me can just email me comments if they wish.

The style of spam is slightly interesting. They are trying to get you to go to their web site. So they send a flattering comment with their web site as the attached address. Because they don’t actually read anything you have written, their flattering comments have to be generic. This results in a stream of tripe closely related to astrology predictions. The good ones make it seem specific but on reflection you realise that it could apply to any blog at all.

I saw this entry in the comments by someone called Jean on www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/07/regarding-double-dips.html#comments

“I think there is a deep difference between liberals and conservatives.

To a conservative, the free market is an absolute moral good. Making the market freer, i.e. less regulated, less taxed and a free-market-at-any-cost, is even “gooder”.

To a progressive, the choice between a free market solution and a government solution depends on outcome. If the government can deliver the same or better outcome in an economic sector (like health care or education) at a fraction of the cost for many more people, then the government solution is the way to go.

Conservatives will simply ignore evidence that progressive policies may be better for the overall economy. In fact, the health of the overall economy is secondary to the pursuit of tax cuts and deregulation, whose benefits are never question because they are inherently good.

It is then natural for a conservative to believe the fallacy that progressives are a mirror image of conservatives, i.e. that progressives consider greater government control an inherent moral good. Conservatives often accuse progressive of being “statists”, people who want to have a controlling government just because they fancy controlling people. This is not true.

Progressives, unlike conservatives, are more interested in OUTCOMES than process. If increased taxes and regulations can lead to a stronger, more stable, more sustainable economy which gives everybody the opportunity to thrive with enough effort and innovation, then so be it.”

Both sides of politics contain voluble extremists, so I have no doubt that it is an easy task to find folks on the left who really do want government to take over running lots of things and basically overturn the whole capitalist, free market system. I think they are a small minority though. Likewise I believe that only a small minority of those on the right wish to reinstate the working conditions that existed at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

In the quotation I was particularly struck by the suggestion that those who are wholly given to the sanctity of the Free Market tend to believe that those who would limit or regulate the Free Market are actually dedicated to its total destruction. I am a pragmatist. This is a dirty word to both extremes of the political spectrum. Communism doesn’t work. A pure Ayn Randian economy would be inhumane. Not enough trickles down. We just have to keep dodging about the centre. It isn’t pretty or pure but it works better than either extreme. No one gets to win their ideological war.

Yet another entry in my “can’t we all just get along” series prompted by the torrent of vitriol in current political debate.

It bothers me when people suggest that such and such will wipe out Life on Earth. This is usually made as part of an argument suggesting that human activity is the cause of a problem.

My issue is that, by using such an absolute, their argument is weakened and sometimes this means that a useful point loses credibility. Some might decide that, if you can show that life wouldn’t be wiped out then the point must be wrong…

It would be very difficult to wipe out all life on Earth. There are extremophile bacteria living deep in the earth in rock strata. To sterilise the planet you would need something akin to the impact that created our Moon, an impact that would have seen the entire crust rendered molten. That oughta do it. Bear in mind though that, as soon as some parts of the surface cooled to around 70°C or so, the extremophile bacteria in orbit would begin to re-colonise the surface.

It is not sensible to have that level of destruction as the level that justifies us getting our act together to protect ourselves from changes to the environment.

This post is just another wish that people would tone down extreme language, hyperbole and abuse.

I have seen the argument that, if global warming is occurring at all, it is a natural thing so we should do nothing. To be consistent, people who hold that view should not seek medical help when any naturally-occurring illness happens to them. Some people do exactly that, but others are vulnerable to the suggestion that they are being logically inconsistent.

We acquired a new PM today. On the radio I heard some random say that the last bloke was no good because “he wasn’t a normal sort of bloke. He couldn’t communicate”. I think that is actually two separate issues.

The ability to communicate is a vital asset in a politician. In fact, all they have is words, so they’d better be good with them.

As for being a normal kind of person… I always hope for better than that. Do we want some average person handling the complex affairs of a huge and sophisticated democracy? I think that above-average wisdom would be a really good place for them to start not being normal.

I can’t remember any of our Prime Ministers being just like normal people. It really isn’t possible to get to the top of the heap and just be average.

I would like this blog to be informative.

Wales will fit into Queensland 82.961308950914341 times… not including Queensland’s islands.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1066484

http://www.ga.gov.au/education/geoscience-basics/dimensions/area-aus-states-territories.jsp

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_area_of_Wales

All part of the service.

I have heard it suggested that those who would have us stop using fossil fuels have, as part of their agenda, the destruction of “our way of life”. By “our way of life” they meant Western, free market, Capitalist economies. It is currently common practice for those of us in the echosphere to cherry pick the lunatic fringe to find references to back up the implication that the world is full of extremists. I can’t be bothered. I can make my point and ignore them.

It does not follow that winding down the use of fossil fuels as fast as we can means that we want to destroy the current system. Bear in mind that they are not an infinite resource in any case. We are going to have to tackle this eventually. If the evidence suggests that they are doing harm, and I consider that self-evident (be careful of your car exhaust), why not tackle the problem before we are at the crisis point?

A more positive, optimistic outlook is to recognise the inevitable and realise that the people who get a jump on solving the problem will have something to sell to those who are slower to move. That’s right; the free market will solve this eventually but there are things that can be done to encourage this to be sooner rather than later.

There is a lot on the net written by experts addressing this so I should leave it to them.

My point though is that it is not disloyal, treacherous, traitorous, Luddite, anti-freedom, Communist, Socialist, protectionist or stupid to suggest that we start changing the energy sources of our economy as soon as possible. It does not mean that there is a “hidden agenda” or that an “intended consequence” is that our current society should be destroyed.

Finally, I firmly believe that it is not naive to believe that we can succeed in changing. History shows many such major changes. It also shows that they are usually accompanied by people who cannot imagine a different future could possibly be better and who rail that the “end is nigh”.

Change is coming. Help or get out of the way.

Tony Robinson on Time Team in reference to “Dark Age”, Anglo-Saxon archeology:

“The Thinking Man’s Dungeons and Dragons.”